Flying into Providencia, the island already shows its beauty. Underneath our little turboprop, the ocean glitters in all its colors – from azure to turquoise. The few passsengers snap pictures with their cells. Even the two pretty sleepy and obviously hungover Brazilian girls start moving again. The airplane jerks and lands smoothly.

Providencia sits 74 km north of its big sister San Andrés and around 800 km from the Colombian mainland in the Caribbean Sea. Therefore, you can’t really tell you’re still in Colombia. It’s all about the island-vibe with tales about pirates and a love for everything Bob Marley. There’s exactly one road that circles the island and all of the 5000 inhabitants know each other. To get the most of this island feeling, you should abide by these “rules”:
– Take. It. Easy. Man!
– Exception: When you ride your scooter or motorbike. Then you go as fast as you can. Always.
– Going from A to B will take three times as long as planned. That’s because you will meet so many people along the way who will want to talk to you.
– Giving high five or a snap with a fist bump are normal forms of greeting someone.
– Don’t worry if you bump into the same person 15 times a day. They’re not following you. You are on an island!

Lots of the cool stuff happens under water though. Snorkeling is like swimming in an aquarium, no kidding. Patricia even crosses paths with a hammerhead shark on one of her dives (see 0:34 min).

The sunsets are also absolutely stunning. Sure, they are always much more breathtaking the moment you see them and looking at the pictures afterwards is a bit boring. But since this one was one of our three all-time-favorites so far, you’ll just have to look at it:

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So far, so good. But besides all this beauty, there are a few things that bother a bit:
– After three days you’ve seen it all. There’s not many things you can do besides diving (you can walk up to the Peak, visit Morgan’s Head and Crab Cay) and that’s when it starts getting boring.
– When it’s raining – and while we were there, it was raining every day except the one we arrived and the one before we left – it’s even worse.
– Internet only works at the airport, which isn’t close by, and in front of the supermarket. And it’s reeeeeally slooooooow.
– Drinking water costs three times as much as on the mainland.

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So we go from “we want to stay here forever” (on sunny days after a dive) to “take me away from here” (on rainy days). Our salvation comes in the shape of a scooter that we rent for three days. With it we discover the rest of the island (it’s not that small, after all) and eat out in some really awesome restaurants. Sometimes when we’re bored we just drive around the island for the fun of it, just like the locals. After the third round they know us too and greet us every time we pass. It’s during one of these discovery tours that we bump into this (not so) little fellow:

After eight days, we fly back to San Andrés. Shopping, day trips and a night at the movie theater are a welcome change after the very relaxed days on Providencia. The city beach of San Andrés town is actually quite beautiful and perfect for a day at the beach. Even if there is quite a lot more people than we’re used to from Providencia. Mass tourism has arrived on this island.

Stadtstrand von San Andrés

Johnny Cay: Wunderschön aber massenhaft Touristen

After a few more days we head back to Cartagena. From there, we will start our sailing trip to Panama in a couple of days. We’re very much looking forward to that and hope for good weather.